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Teen accused in Craigslist killing could be responsible for other slayings

CRAIGSLIST KILLER: The FBI said on Sunday it was in contact with local police in the case of Miranda Barbour, who is charged with murdering a Pennsylvania man she lured via the website Craigslist and reportedly admits to the killing and at least 22 other slayings. Photo: Associated Press

By Victoria Cavaliere

NEW YORK (Reuters) – The FBI said on Sunday it was in contact with local police in the case of Miranda Barbour, who is charged with murdering a Pennsylvania man she lured via the website Craigslist and reportedly admits to the killing and at least 22 other slayings.

Barbour, 19, could face the death penalty in connection with the murder of the 42-year-old man who answered her bogus ad offering sex for $100, authorities said.

In a jailhouse interview, Barbour said she was part of a satanic cult and had no remorse for her victims, according to an article published in Saturday’s edition of the Daily Item newspaper in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.

She admitted that she and her husband stabbed and strangled Troy LaFerrara in Sunbury in November because “he said the wrong things.”

Barbour also said she had killed at least 22 people in different parts of the country, including Alaska, California, Texas and North Carolina.

“When I hit 22, I stopped counting,” she said in the article on the paper’s website.

“I can pinpoint on a map where you can find them,” she said.

The FBI said on Sunday in a statement that its Philadelphia division “has recently been in contact with the Sunbury Police Department regarding Miranda Barbour, and will offer any assistance requested in the case.”

Barbour and her husband, Elytte Barbour, 22, in state court in December pleaded not guilty to killing LaFerrara, whose body was found dumped in an alley.

The Daily Item, which has a circulation of about 25,000, has been following the case closely.

Prosecutors say the husband hid under a blanket in the back of the car when his wife picked up LaFerrara at a mall near Harrisburg, about 50 miles south of Sunbury.

Barbour said she would have let LaFerrara go but after telling him she was just 16, he said he wanted to proceed with their pay-for-sex arrangement.

“If he would have said no, that he wasn’t going to go through with the arrangement, I would have let him go,” she told the newspaper.

On her signal, Elytte Barbour, her husband of just three weeks, strangled LaFerrara with a cord while his wife stabbed him about 20 times, police say.